The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

I made another adventure or two, but they were but trifles too, though

sufficient to live on. After this nothing considerable offering for a

good while, I began to think that I must give over the trade in

earnest; but my governess, who was not willing to lose me, and expected

great things of me, brought me one day into company with a young woman

and a fellow that went for her husband, though as it appeared

afterwards, she was not his wife, but they were partners, it seems, in

the trade they carried on, and partners in something else. In short,

they robbed together, lay together, were taken together, and at last

were hanged together.

I came into a kind of league with these two by the help of my

governess, and they carried me out into three or four adventures, where

I rather saw them commit some coarse and unhandy robberies, in which

nothing but a great stock of impudence on their side, and gross

negligence on the people's side who were robbed, could have made them

successful. So I resolved from that time forward to be very cautious

how I adventured upon anything with them; and indeed, when two or three

unlucky projects were proposed by them, I declined the offer, and

persuaded them against it. One time they particularly proposed robbing

a watchmaker of three gold watches, which they had eyed in the daytime,

and found the place where he laid them. One of them had so many keys

of all kinds, that he made no question to open the place where the

watchmaker had laid them; and so we made a kind of an appointment; but

when I came to look narrowly into the thing, I found they proposed

breaking open the house, and this, as a thing out of my way, I would

not embark in, so they went without me. They did get into the house by

main force, and broke up the locked place where the watches were, but

found but one of the gold watches, and a silver one, which they took,

and got out of the house again very clear. But the family, being

alarmed, cried out 'Thieves,' and the man was pursued and taken; the

young woman had got off too, but unhappily was stopped at a distance,

and the watches found upon her. And thus I had a second escape, for

they were convicted, and both hanged, being old offenders, though but

young people. As I said before that they robbed together and lay

together, so now they hanged together, and there ended my new

partnership.